“We see growing interest of healthcare testing labs in implementing next-gen lab automation solutions”
Country Manager - India & Sub Continent, Abbott Informatics - STARLIMS, Hyderabad
US-based Abbott Informatics, formerly known as Starlims, is one of the oldest companies working in the space of lab automation. Taking pride in offering the best technological solutions, the company has recently announced the launch of Starlims Quality Manufacturing Solution QM12.2 which is built on the latest Starlims Technology v12 platform, along with STARLIMS SDMS (Scientific Data Management System) V12.2. To find out more about the company’s automated offerings in India, BioSpectrum spoke to Pradeep Nagisetty, Country Manager - India & Sub Continent, Abbott Informatics - STARLIMS, Hyderabad.
Edited excerpts;
How was the LIMS business at Abbott for the FY 2020-21?
We had a wonderful year globally for both top line and bottom line growth and perhaps better than the Year-on-Year (YoY) growth compared to FY2019 and FY2018. Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and lab automation is expected to be the COVID-19 resilient industry considering the increased demand for COVID-19 testing. While our North America and Europe and other developed markets performed exceptionally well, the developing markets and especially Asia Pacific (APAC) markets including India didn’t have favourable sales conditions during pandemic times in the past 12 to 16 months. Customer CAPEX investments priorities have changed rigorously although they had approved budgets for the lab automation and compliance. Internet connectivity, travel restrictions, administrative challenges and most importantly the cultural shift from buying over the table to buying over online had a big impact in closing the deals timely. Longer sales cycles impacted some of the key opportunities pushed to FY 21-22. Overall we still managed to achieve our bottom line and industry standard growth in India and APAC despite the unfavourable sales and buying conditions. However, the Professional Services/Project Implementation and Annual Maintenance revenues were fast tracked considering the delivery teams are fully focused on delivery and support and we managed to achieve 30 per cent or more delivery TAT. That helped several customers to go live earlier than anticipated or they are ahead of the original project plans.
What were the major product releases in 2020?
We had a golden opportunity to engage and hear from customer and market demands and our R&D and product team were able to absorb most of them and made big progress including two new product releases, several technology upgrades, critical bug fixes, data integrity improvement, performance improvements and finally much needed cyber security enhancements. To the best of our knowledge this is the highest number of releases and improvements by any commercial LIMS vendor in this space in the last 12 to 16 months.
In April 2021, we saw the STARLIMS QM V12.2 release for the pharmaceutical and other manufacturing industry. Then we have the New SDMS product – Scientific Data Management System. A standalone SDMS software that helps with automatic lab equipment integration, raw data and process data capturing, store and organize the data in folders, search and reporting, long term data storage and archival, assuring highest data integrity in the regulatory labs. We have also launched a new LES – Lab Execution System product. This helps to ensure Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are being followed and tasks are being developed in a compliant and controlled way in regulatory labs. This is a fully touch enabled interface system that works seamlessly in any smart device and is fully mobile enabled
in the labs. We have also released an Automated Validation Framework and testing kit that reduces the time, cost, resources and complexity by 40 per cent or more using the automated testing kit over the manual testing methods. Then we have brought new integration capabilities – SAP4/HANA Integration, interface with Biovia Draw and Biovia Direct for chemical structures, Thermo Chromeleon 7.3 CDS interface upgrade, Waters Empower 3 FR5 CDS interface upgrade. Further, we have existing and much needed products, modules and integrations in the launch pipeline in the next 12 months.
How do you foresee the long term adoption of lab automation in the life sciences sector in India?
It is extremely demanding and we see more than 30 per cent growth YoY opportunity in Life Science, Biotech, Commercial Contract Testing Labs, Specialty Chemicals and other key manufacturing industries. There are several growth opportunities in store such as several domestic and Foreign Direct Investments, increased regulatory needs, business consolidation, competitiveness among domestic and global players, demand for quality products, over all increased awareness of the Digitalization and Industry 4.0 adoption in India will create the new opportunities in the next two to three years to come. There are other factors such as increased global and domestic demand for vaccines, injectables, generics markets that will continue to invest in scaling up their product lines and hence there is increased need for the lab automation and quality testing automation.
On the other hand, there are a few challenges such as pandemic uncertainty in prioritisation of CAPEX, resource and time investments by customers; travel and other administrative challenges in sales, implementation and support services; price sensitive market providing equal opportunity for global players pricing and contractual engagements; cloud adoption due to several myths over the data security, data accessibility and unavailability of required internet bandwidth connectivity; shortage of human resources who have best of the breed skill set.
Is adoption of lab automation more popular in the industry or academia?
Unlike North America and Europe markets, India and APAC is 85 per cent or more industry and commercial labs driven market over the academic markets. This is mainly due to the fact that affordability, level of IT and automation adoption in academic labs is very low and most importantly less collaborations between industry and academic. However, there is an increased interest and need for the pharma, Food & Beverages, specialty chemicals and other manufacturing R&D labs for adoption of lab automation solutions in Indian market. This is mainly due to the increased investments in innovation, new product development initiatives and opportunities. Indian companies are competing with global products, and several FDI in India are opening up the new possibilities to invest in R&D. Abbott Informatics- STARLIMS is fully prepared to deliver the R&D specialty lab automation solutions like ELN, LES and other relevant tools.
How can we enhance the adoption of lab automation into the Indian healthcare system, at both private and public level?
Healthcare opens up new opportunities in India for lab automation tools and solutions considering the fast progressing healthcare facilities expansion to B and C towns and rural parts of India. Prognosis and Diagnostics is important for the right treatment and clinical decision making capabilities for healthcare practitioners. Routine testing, Disease based testing, Condition based testing, Bedside treatment testing, Pandemic testing, Lifestyle related testing, Personal care testing etc. are opening up new opportunities for the Private and Public labs. Rapid Testing, affordability, providing quality results, accessibility of results from anywhere, Patient data safety, home collections, analytics, smart device access etc. have become the new benchmarks in healthcare testing. Hence absolute automation of lab processes right from Sample collection to Report delivery has become a new normal and we see a growing interest of small, medium and large commercial testing labs and government labs implementing the next gen lab automation solutions. On the other hand, the governments are fast realizing the need for creating a safer, cleaner and better place to live and overall improve the quality of life-index for India. This requires government agencies and policy making organizations to test the various samples from public health, water testing, pollution testing, soil testing, environmental testing, food testing and material testing to assure the quality of life and right to live conditions assurance. This should also open up new opportunities for Abbott InformaticsSTARLIMS Public Health, Environmental Testing and Forensic Testing products market in India in next two to three years.